Megan and Murray

10th International Istanbul Biennial: Nightcomers Screenings

Our video, The Stepping Up and Going Under Method is currently showing in the 10th International Istanbul Biennial (Sept 8 to Nov 4, 2007), as a part of the Nightcomers exhibition.

For the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, five curators from Turkey have been invited to select over 150 short video works from an open-call to the public. During the nights, the program, under the title of "Nightcomers," will be projected in public spaces in different parts of the city, from the centre to the periphery. The Dutch artists couple Bik Van der Pol have researched and selected about 25 spots and have designed the mobile projection device.

For the first time in the history of İstanbul Biennial, a real open participation of the public has been made possible so that thousands of people living in areas without access to "high culture" can have direct contact with contemporary art. Or, contemporary art is brought to the frontier of a true public gaze.

Remaining Screening Dates and Locations:
Oct 18: Tugay Yolu Caddesi, Maltepe
Oct 21: Mecidiyeköy, Şişli (Otobüs duraklarının arkası)
Oct 23: E5 Tem Okmeydanı Bağlantı Yolu ile Kağıthane Caddesi’nin Kesişimi, Köprü Ayağı, Kağıthane
Oct 25: İtfaiye Caddesi, Zeyrek, Fatih
Oct 27: Kısıklı Caddesi, Altunizade, Üsküdar
Oct 30: Kanlıca Hisarı Caddesi, Kanlıca, Beykoz
Nov 02: Karamük Çayevi, Asmalımescit, İstiklal Caddesi, Beyoğlu

Related: Release01's Report; Art News Blog; and Saatchi Gallery's Blog

Dallas Video Festival, Saturday, Aug. 4

Our video, The Stepping Up and Going Under Method, will be showing in the closing night of the 20th Annual Dallas Video Festival tomorrow, Saturday, Aug. 4 at 8:45 at the Dallas Theater Center. It looks like a great line-up: we are just three shorts after a Miranda July.

Here is the schedule for tomorrow, which includes our film at 8:45pm. Incidentally, tonight they're showing The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, an excellent film that a couple of our new Greek friends introduced us to last weekend. Brilliant, funny and philosophical, the PGTC will make you think of Hitchcock in a whole new light. One snippet: the most frightening thing in cinema is not death, but the inanimate undead object, or that which cannot die, yet does not live.

You can buy tickets to the festival here, but if you're not able to make it to the screening, the ever-innovative DVF is simultaneously hosting the film festival on Second Life for one week in conjunction with the live events. Here's what you need to know and here's where you need to go.

Truck: Installation Images

Installation documentation of our work in the Truck exhibition.

Truck: Installation Construction

This weekend we opened two of our videos (The Stepping Up and Going Under Method and Bruc Fugue) as part of the TRUCK exhibition in Kansas City (wow, what an art town — more on that soon). We made a box to contain each monitor, which also contained items that have a relationship with each video. Here our some construction images of making the boxes. We'll post final images tomorrow.

Nearly finished

Detail

Rope Storage

Telescope tripod storage

Fitting in the TV

Truck: Video+

This is a drawing of the box we're gonna place our monitors inside for the Truck show (see post below). These boxes will serve as both exhibition crate and display strategy. The inspiration easily comes from three teachers I studied under, Mel Ziegler (the container as art), Dan Sutherland (the art's crate as art) and Bill Lundberg (video as sculpture).

Now that I think about it, there is a long history of containers and art crates, including Marcel Duchamp, perhaps the most well known. Wouldn't it be great/scary if someone assembled a concept diagram that kept track of where art ideas came from?

Idaho: SUGU Process

And finally, here is the collage from The Stepping Up and Going Under Method (SUGU) at the Friesen galleries (that opened last weekend).

Idaho Installation Complete

Here are images from the opening last night. We'll post details tomorrow.

Idaho: Opening Tonight

We have a two-gallery opening featuring Sea Shovel and The Stepping Up and Going Under Method at NNU in Boise tonight. For the last two days, we've been working on two wall collages that document the process of making both videos (images coming soon).

Opening in Idaho on Feb. 5

We're going to Boise this week to install a show that opens next Tuesday. The exhibition at NNU will feature two video and audio pieces, Sea Shovel and The Stepping Up and Going Under Method, along with a large-scale wall collage of the process documentation exploring the making of each video. The collage will span the range from step-by-step photos of the building of each of the video's sets to writings addressing the metaphorical underpinnings of the work.

Sea Shovel is a video in which a man carrying a shovel pulls a ship behind him; he is oblivious to his burden. On the ship are two groups of characters: the sleepers and the workers. As the ship moves along, the workers dump barrels of trash over the side while three soldiers follow behind, sweeping up in trash that scatters in the ship’s wake. The soundtrack of rustling trash mimics the sound of a boat out at sea.

In The Stepping Up and Going Under Method, a boat traveling along a metal track carries two characters: a woman crouched at the prow like a figurehead, and the mariner who guides the boat down the track. As the boat approaches an obstacle blocking its path, the travelers must make a choice: what will they do with the obstacle in front of them? The soundtrack is derived from a NASA recording of a rocket booster disengaging in space, re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and crashing into the ocean.

SUGU: Final Set and Lighting

Here are images from the set of The Stepping Up and Going Under Method we finished filming Sunday. The images show the key points, from the camera viewpoint traveling down the conveyor. Each box was hand-placed to not look hand-placed.